


More eloquence in a sugar touch of them

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Confederate AU, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Love Letters, Romance, Trauma, Widowed, commandeered farmhouse, locked door
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 17:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16602215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "She allowed herself to consider, for one brief instant, what might happened should she, one day, neglect to lock it." Mary opens a door.





	More eloquence in a sugar touch of them

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Such outward things dwell not in my desires](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446887) by [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow). 



His door was unlocked, as it turned out. Mary let her hand rest on the glass doorknob, longer than she had ever done before, in all the time she’d lived in the house. She wasn’t a woman who lingered—she’d never been caught up in a fanciful daydream and been interrupted by Aurelia or Gustav, bless his dear, affectionate soul, while he lived. She had a purpose at every moment or so she wanted to believe. So she’d believed before Captain Foster and his men had commandeered her farmhouse and her land, pitching tents to the right of her rhubarb, washing up at the horse-trough just beyond the wide front porch, sunburnt men bare to the waist, splashing in the water, mocking each other with the harshness of comrades, of men who knew they might die in the next shower of bullets, who meant to make the most of living until then. They ate their scant meals with gusto and sang in the evenings as if they caroused in taverns. That was the end of it though; Captain Foster had been firm with them and none had tried to accost Aurelia, none had called her anything but ma’am, except for Foster’s second-in-command, who called her madam, and the little boy who lied to enlist to carry the flag. Thompson called her Miz Mary once he’d heard Jed Foster use her Christian name and Mary couldn’t bring herself to correct the child, who could be no more than a lanky fourteen. What must his mother think, to have him so far away? How did she sleep through the night?

Getting through the night could be difficult for anyone, but the War made it harder. Even before the men had been quartered in and around her house, there had been the runaway slaves Mary helped in their quest to freedom. Their needs were so great and what she could do for them so little—she’d said as much to Samuel one night, who’d answered “It’s not little to them, it’s everything, when you’ve got nothing but your conviction you’ve a soul to save.” She was shamed by his reply until he added, “Goodness is never little, it’s never too little even if it always feels wanting” and had smiled at her with the closest expression to honesty he had for her. 

When there was no one about the place except for Samuel and Aurelia, the surly mule Silas in the barn and Plum underfoot or nestled in Mary’s favorite chair, there were the memories of her husband’s death to keep her from a restful night. The brutality of his last illness made him beg for release even though she knew it hurt him to leave her. He’d died in their bed, in the room she slept in and she couldn’t say his ghost haunted her, but she missed him. The dreams where he came to her were too bitter to be bittersweet, too precious to wish away. She had put his things away in his trunk, the trunk he’d brought from Germany, but she still lay down to sleep on her side of the bed, his smooth, undisturbed as she wished she might be.

She’d woken easily at the sound from the room beside hers, the room where Captain Foster stayed. It was not as large as hers, but the windows overlooked the fields where his men were and he’d nearly clapped his hands at the small writing table set beside the window, announcing, 

“Perfect! You’d never imagine the paperwork the Army requires. The War might end today if the Yankees could simply embargo all our ink and foolscap!”

Mary had nodded then, in lieu of a smile, unable to smile truly or false. Foster had still been distracted by the desk and hadn’t been scrutinizing her with his usual acuity, a blessing. She’d merely pointed out the china pitcher on the chest and explained the sheets were clean, but many times mended, a spare quilt ready at the foot of the bed. She had not been in the room since, allowing Aurelia to keep it neat and fresh without her intervention. She had not thought to go in, since she’d allowed Captain Foster to sleep there, but he could not be sleeping and the handle turned easily in her hand. She stepped inside quietly and saw how he stood beside the window, the floor littered with foolscap, the desk covered in his military dispatches. He seemed taller, older in the shadows, the dim light suggesting more grey in his beard, at his temples.

“Christ Almighty! What are you doing here?” he exclaimed, turning to face her. He’d shed his coat and loosened his collar, rolled his sleeves half-way up to save them any splashes of ink, a sensible approach without any manches de lunette to keep his linen clean.

“You cried out,” she said. He didn’t appear ill, as she’d feared. As she couldn’t help fearing, hearing a man’s voice in the night, anguished, abandoned.

“So you simply came in? Without knocking, without asking permission?” he retorted. The candle closest to him guttered, the light flickering across his face. The look in his eyes was not anger, that she could see in the flare of gold, and his hair was tousled, as if he’d run a hand through it—in despair? Frustration? 

“It’s my house. I don’t need permission,” she said evenly. “Or am I not the mistress here—have you taken that as well? Have you made me nothing but an interloper in my own home?”

“No. No, of course not,” he said. He made some gesture, his hand reaching out towards her as if he were beckoning. “No, never that. I forgot myself, I never expected to see you here. Like this,” he added, against gesturing towards her but this time more clearly indicating the dark shawl she’d pulled round her shoulders, the white muslin nightdress, her hair in a loose, thick braid over her shoulder.

“You look all of seventeen,” he muttered. Seventeen seemed so long ago, Mary could do nothing but laugh at his remark. A laugh that startled him, not nearly as much as her entrance, but still enough to make him blink.

“I am still myself, a widow of thirty, even if I’m not dressed in a wool polonaise and overskirt. Are you not still Captain Foster, out of uniform?” she asked. In his shirtsleeves and braces, his uniform trousers only a drab color in the night, he looked like any man in his home, readying himself for his bed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes, I don’t know who I am anymore. A surgeon—or a butcher? An undertaker? A heretic priest who doesn’t dare believe in the God he writes about?” He pointed to the desk, strewn with papers, the pen in the inkwell like the shaft of a feather or the slim spear of a bayonet.

“Is that why? Is that why you cried out?” she asked softly. She found herself walking closer, away from the door. From any chance of an escape.

“Thompson won’t survive. I’ve given him enough morphine he won’t suffer, but it will take a miracle for him to wake in the morning. He’s delirious, too far gone to save,” he said.

“Sometimes, it’s sudden. Even for a physician trained, you cannot anticipate everything. He was not so badly injured as James,” Mary said. “Captain Foster—”

“For the love of God, don’t call me that. Not tonight. Please,” he said, rubbing a hand across his eyes. 

“What shall I call you, then?”

“My name, my Christian name is Jedediah,” he said. “Call me that if you must call me something.” It was an impropriety, Mary knew that, but she stood in her nightdress before him, alone in a darkened bedroom, in the middle of War she fought alongside his enemy. What was his name then?

“Jedediah,” she said, then paused. She thought of the sound that had woken her from her uneasy sleep, that had made her rush from her bed, heedless as the seventeen year old girl she’d once been.

“You have been writing to someone then? For Private Thompson? His mother?” she said.

“His wife. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, barely able to grow a beard, but he’s married. A father in the summer, he says. Except summer will never come for him, damn it all to hell,” he said.

“Oh,” Mary said. She knew a little of what Mrs. Thompson would feel, not all of it. To lose someone while they were still close was a torment. To be distant, to be kept from sitting a vigil, from offering a last sip of water or singing his favorite hymn, was a grief she didn’t know.

“You think it is beneath me, to be so affected,” Jedediah said. He’d meant the words to be accusatory, critical, but he could not make them so. She heard only his fear, his guilt. His loneliness in the dark night.

“No, Jedediah. I think it means you are the leader of these men. And you are their physician,” she said, watching him regard her. She didn’t look away though she stopped holding her shawl so tightly. “I think it means you are a man, with a man’s soul, a man’s fear of being forsaken.”

“How? How do you know me so well? Who are you?” he asked. She could see how desperately he wanted her to answer. She could not tell him the whole truth—a part would have to do.

“I know right from wrong. I’m a widow, who lost her beloved husband, a Northerner used to long winters. To being cold, to waiting for the endless dark night to be broken by the dawn,” she said. “I used to be _liebe Mareike, meine Perle_ , but now I am only Mary again.”

When had he gotten so close to her? There was space between them, just the smallest margin, and then there was not, as he laid his hands upon her arms beneath the shawl that fell to the ground like an extra shadow. Her arms were bare, the nightdress’s sleeves short, and she felt his palms stroke her from her wrists to her shoulders. The hands that held a knife, that could mend a man well enough to live, were gentle upon her skin, warm. They felt the same when he took her face in his two hands.

“Only Mary. As if you need be anything else,” he said, his voice low. She heard every word.

“Dearest Mary,” he said and waited if she would, finally, pull away. She turned her face slightly, pressing her cheek against his right palm, grazing his skin with her lips. It was the answer he’d wanted—he moved swiftly, kissing her deeply, his right hand cupping her head, his left dropped to her waist, to bring her flush against him. She arched into his embrace, wanting him and not only his desire for her, feeling an enormous tenderness for him even as she tasted his lips. He gasped against her and she briefly thought, for a bachelor, he must be shocked to hold a woman in his arms. A woman in only a thin muslin shift, not corset or petticoats disguising her form, the curve of her breast, her hip, her bottom all immediate, available. 

She felt dizzy, reached up to pull him near, to wrap her arms around his neck and touch his tousled dark curls. They shifted, together, and she felt the foot of the brass bed at her back; it was a barrier and she was glad of it, dimly aware that without it, she would be lying across the white bed, across the quilt she’d pieced over a winter, and Jedediah would be above her. She would not try to stop him, would not want to, whatever it cost her later—which was more than she could bear. For it would not be her life she risked but every slave from Georgia, Alabama, from Tennessee who’d walked and run and had only prayer for succor and the faint promise of a night of rest at a house like hers, a tin cup full of cold water, a biscuit glossed the fresh butter. The elaborate metal frame of the bed kept her from abandoning her duty, her soul’s requirement, in her headlong rush into an adoring passion. It did not keep her from kissing the man in her arms, from holding him tightly and listening for the sounds of his pleasure, his shocked joy.

“Mary, oh God, my Mary, my Mary,” he murmured, breaking away just enough to speak. His hands, those sensitive, slender surgeon’s hands were caressing her back, along her ribs, grazing her full, unbound breasts, then reaching to her hip, to discover the curve of her bottom, the line of her thigh.

“You must know who you are now. You know,” she said, half-wild with his touch, with the ardent look in his dark eyes.

“I’m yours,” he said. If he had said he belonged with her, that he was her lover, she would not have flinched but the word yours, the ownership reminded her of the people she was meant to save. Whose lives she couldn’t forfeit for her own impetuous affection.

“You’re Jedediah. Captain Foster, Dr. Foster, whichever title you choose, you are Jedediah,” she said, breathing the words against his skin.

“Nothing more?” he asked.

“My darling,” she said. “ _Mon coeur_.” He leaned in to kiss her again, his lips soft against her, passion superceded by the most tender affection.

“I want you as my wife,” he said. She thought he must imagine the minister coming round in the morning, conducting a ceremony in her parlor while his men looked on. He must imagine the minister an old man, fond of playing his fiddle in the evenings, nodding off over his sermons, but it was young Henry Hopkins who tended their small flock, a Methodist so close to being a Quaker he’d balked at joining the fighting ranks, even as a chaplain. Henry was a friend, sympathetic and astute, and he would say the words over them if she asked but he’d wonder at it. And her.

“No,” Mary said. Jedediah hadn’t pushed her away with her rejection, but he stood still, so still she fancied she could hear their two hearts striving to catch the same rhythm, an intrinsic unison that could not be denied.

“But I love you,” he said slowly. “And you, you’ve said you love me. I’ve compromised you tonight, alone in this room. I cannot love you and take your honor, your virtue. I cannot live with that.”

“You’ve not harmed me at all. No one knows about tonight and no one need know, save you and I,” Mary said.

“You’re ashamed though,” he snapped.

“No. I am aware this is not the time for us to marry. Not when you must leave, when you would leave me behind, a stranger again in my community, Mrs. Foster when I have been Mrs. von Olnhausen,” Mary explained. She thought it was an answer he could tolerate—one that was grafted to the truth.

“Not now—when?” he said, seizing on the essential. Holding her more tightly again, as if he couldn’t let her go.

“Perhaps, when the War ends, however it ends…you would want to come back to me. Perhaps, when it comes, you won’t,” she said.

“I will. Nothing could alter that,” he replied.

“Oh, such certainty! True love does not alter, when it alteration finds,” she said, quoting the sonnet he would surely know, even if he only remembered the shape of the words in his mouth.

“You cannot tease me out of this. I will come back. I will come back and ask you again. I will write to you, if you let me. I would come to you on my furlough, if I have to pitch a tent in your kitchen garden, among the mint and sage,” he promised. He was older than she was, she knew it, but he sounded like a boy, like a young man with his first love. So much might happen between-times. She imagined, she hoped she might find a way to reconcile her duty to the Railroad and her love, to discover how they might form a union as the country did. She would pray harder for the end of the War, for that end, for she could not marry him, could not hope to if the Confederacy prevailed; then, all her energy must be turned to saving those who had no one, not her own desires.

“You may write to me. You may even begin tonight if you wish,” she said lightly.

“And hand you the billet-doux in the kitchen, as you make porridge? I think not!” he retorted, some of his old mockery coloring the words.

“You might leave your letter in a book. In the parlor, there are several on the shelf. I can’t imagine your men would ransack that, in a quest for Shakespeare or Tennyson,” Mary smiled.

“That would satisfy you?” he replied, glancing at how he held her in his arms, the open throat of her nightdress, her flushed cheeks.

“A courtship? Yes. I am not so different from any other woman,” she said.

“There’s not another like you in the world,” he said.

“A questionable compliment,” she replied. “Perhaps it is best you write to me, find out whether I am the one you truly want.”

“You’ll write back?” Jedediah asked, ignoring the jab she’d made, the escape she’d allowed him.

“Of course,” she said. A correspondence could be proper, could let them each begin to understand the other, truly. She might find out whether he could be trusted as well as loved.

“You must let me go now,” she added, dropping her hand from his neck to his breast. Resting it against his heart for a moment, feeling his warmth, the strength of his vitality. If he should be lost, she would have this—this night and the few letters he might write before he left.

“I won’t keep you. But I won’t let you go. Ever,” he said, stepping back from her. He bent gracefully to pick up her fallen shawl, wrapped it around her again as if she’d grown cool in the moment she left his embrace.

“We must always let go,” Mary said. She thought of Gustav, his lined face so pale, his eyes so dark watching her, and Thompson, panting on the pallet in her parlor. She thought of Samuel’s expression in the night, bringing someone to safety, taking another out into the dawn and Aurelia’s eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of her son.

“Then, I’ll always come back. Wherever I go, I’ll always be thinking of how I will return to you,” Jedediah said. She knew she could trust the truth of it—she wasn’t sure whether that was good, just that it was. He picked up her hand and held it to his lips for a kiss and she knew it was a vow. She had no reason to believe he’d ever break it.

**Author's Note:**

> Unable to resist sagiow's embedded prompt, even though she is on vacation right now and won't see this until her return. The title is from Henry V but the quoted line "true love does not alter" is Shakespeare sonnet 116.
> 
> In which the barrier of Eliza Foster is not present, but the Underground Railroad makes an even bigger difference. And I managed to get Mary's quintessential line about morality in here too.
> 
> Henry Hopkins has made an appearance (which should allow for more) and I have made Bullen into Mary's terrible, ornery mule!


End file.
